Thursday, 2 August 2012

Everything is green and growing well, and we have had 11mm of rain in the last two weeks. This is topping up the moisture in the soil just nicely. Ben has been putting out Liquid nitrogen(UAN) on the Barley and a second lot on the canola as it is starting to bolt ( starting to shoot up and flower). When we were out with Steve last week we noticed that the Twilight peas were starting to get Powdery mildew, which is a fungal disease. We can control this with agriphos which we can add to the grass weed mixture when we spray out the grasses in the peas.
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Commander Barley growing in between last years stubble rows

Ben was spraying broad leaf out of the wheat and barley at Tamar when he took this picture of the Dow Agriscience guys spraying the weeds in the trial plots. He had to wait for them to leave before he could finish the paddock. It was good to see we were obviously spraying the weeds at the correct time.

We signed up more wheat at $304 and Barley at $257 last week. We are pretty much at our limit for forward sales for this coming harvest for wheat. So now we can sit back and watch what the market does. The pea price is starting to look attractive, but we can never forward contract too much, as it can potentially get hailed upon, as has happened the last 2 out of 3 years.

This year we are not happy with the way the soil compacted behind the seeder. We have a tow behind box that usually causes no problems, but this year in many of the paddocks we have area's like the picture above where the compaction is stopping the plant pushing through. Now to work out whether or not we were sowing to deep or maybe its just time to bite the bullet and either buy a new seeder or have ours converted to a tow between box. Quite a few people we know who have this configuration actually put a video camera on the box so they can see if any of the hoses have blown off. This was out initial reason for getting the tow behind box so we could actually see the bung ups and hoses, again decisions...

The Kids and I have been having lots of fun the last few weeks on the farm. We have been planting tree's round the farm and eremophilas around our extended garden. I wish sometimes that we had it fenced so there actually was a cut off point between the garden and scrub. We actually have about 15 acres of yard and Garden so its a big area to keep the weeds under control in. We have an old cottage on the farm about 300m from the homestead which Ben's Mum and Dad and three siblings lived in for about 9 years when they were first married and starting their family. It was built in the fifties, so has lovely asbestos cladding. It has not been lived in now for over 6 years. We were quoted about $15,000 to remove it because of the asbestos, so we are contemplating whether to spend that money renovating it, or just demolishing it hmmmm... decisions

What was funny though was today I was putting out a knockdown around the cottage and came across this agave with the most amazing flower. I reckon this has only grown in the last two weeks. Here are a few images of what we have been up to for the last few weeks.

The best pets ever!!!Lilly Dallas and Ginger the chickens, they are also very useful, unlike some other animals that we have . When Ben was making Hugo's birthday cake, we had to keep sending the kids down to check for eggs as we were one short. luckily they came up with the goods in the nick of time.

We had a new friend over for dinner last Friday, Clancy the 8 month old red kangaroo.

He has been adopted by friends of ours Wade and Nicole Harris.

Our newest ebay purchase, this is going to go above the work bench in the new workshop when it is built. It was pulled out of a house in Hyde Park. Someones trash is someones treasure!!

My little man Hugo turned 3 last Sunday so we organised a pirate party down at his favourite spot, Tippera rocks sand dunes with a few of his buddies. We are so lucky to have such amazing beaches close to home, and again we managed to fluke a beautiful day. Of course being winter, no flies.

Anyway we are off to the local Apex fundraiser Ball this weekend down at Barley stacks winery near Maitland, so time time to dust off the heels and Ben to get his kilt out woo hoo.